Feng Chen Wang reinvents Levi’s iconic 60s jacket

Published on 16 October 2017

For fans of Americana style, you probably own at least one item from Levi’s®, be it a faded pair of jeans you bought when you were 18-years-old to that classic indigo jacket that happens to go with 90% of your wardrobe. The brand’s iconic trucker jackets are synonymous with DIY rock ‘n’ roll rebellion (the Type I and the Type II debuted all the way back in the 1800s – but in the late 1960s, the Type III quickly became a major symbol of cultural revolution).

“It was the Summer of Love,” says Levi’s® head of design Jonathan Cheung about the Type III’s debut. “People like George Harrison were wearing it. I think he was doing peace marches in San Francisco. And then it spread very quickly. It became an icon of popular culture, specifically on musicians.”

Alongside 49 creatives from Solange to Virgil Abloh, London-based menswear designer Feng Chen Wang has collaborated with Levi, to create a customised jacket in celebration of its 50th Anniversary. Feng Chen – whose designs have a strong focus on technical outerwear – is an avid vintage collector herself (her first Type III was a late ‘60s-early ‘70s model, which she found in a weekend market in London). “I love to collect vintage clothes be- cause you don’t need to create stories about them,” she says. “They tell their own stories.” For her custom jacket, she scoured London and found 20 vintage Levi’s Truckers, which she then combined into a single jacket. “My creation is collectively telling their stories and memories from the past 50 years in one piece.”